Our step-by-step guide to the rules of how to play The Princess Bride Adventure Book Game. This is a very fun and thematic cooperative adventure game that puts you right in the middle of the events of the classic 1987 film. It is a great combination of several smaller games that link together in one larger overarching journey. It not only does the film justice but is fun to play. There are many steps in how to play The Princess Bride Adventure Book Game but you are guided incredibly well by the materials and flow of gameplay.
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HOW TO PLAY THE PRINCESS BRIDE ADVENTURE BOOK GAME – WHAT IS IT?
Fencing. Fighting. Revenge. Giants. Monsters. Chases. Escapes. True Love. Miracles.
In The Princess Bride, players cooperate to advance the plot and tell all six chapters of the story despite interuptions from a sick grandson. Instead of each player controlling a single character, players work together to complete challenges by moving characters and discarding story cards from their hands.
HOW TO PLAY THE PRINCESS BRIDE ADVENTURE BOOK GAME – STEP BY STEP
Time Needed: Approximately 15 – 90 minutes.
This is a step by step guide for how to play The Princess Bride Adventure Book Game the fun cooperative adventure board game. Additional notions and special rules can be found below the list. These will be referenced for your convenience.
1. SETUP | Open Adventure Book
As you will see in this how to play The Princess Bride Adventure Book Game journey, that the gameboard is a storybook with different chapters you need to work through. Each time is a new setup. Open it up to the chapter you are working on. If this is your first game, that is chapter 1.
2. SETUP | Place Replay Tile Besides the Book
Take the two-sided replay tile (“grandson” on one side and “grandpa” on the other) next two the board with the Grandson side face up. This is the marker that dictates if you lose. When you flip is over and trigger it, the game is over.
3. SETUP | Place Challenge Complete Tokens
Place the five red circle challenge complete tokens near the board. These are to mark off that chapter’s challenges when they are finished.
4. SETUP | Put Out “Story” and “Special” Cards
The cards with the beige back and cross symbol are two of the main types of cards for the game, the “story” and “special” cards. At the very beginning of your journey, seperate these into their types. Special cards are the ones with characters or events on them and have a little book symbol in the bottom middle of each card. The Story cards look like playing cards, with mirrored images of one of the five different “suits”. Special cards get shuffled into the Story Deck as the game goes on and then it stay this way. The special deck goes to the right of the board and the story deck goes to the top middle.
5. SETUP | Put Out Plot Cards
The third type of card in your how to play The Princess Bride Adventure Book Game setup is the “plot” cards with the green back. Shuffle these and place them to the left of the game board. These are cards with numbers on them that correspond to different spaces or events in each chapter. They will move along what happens to you each turn.
6. SETUP | Deal Starting Hands
Deal out 4x cards from the story deck to each player for their starting hands. The game is fully cooperative so these can be face up for everyone to see.
7. SETUP | Hand Out Reference Cards
Give each player a reference card which shows the steps of each turn.
8. SETUP | Follow Chapter Setup Rules
After all the above setup is done, each chapter has its own specific setup rules which can be found in the rulebook. These tell you which spaces to put characters and tokens on. Not every character and thing is in every chapter.
9. SETUP | Determine Start Player
The last step of how to play The Princess Bride Adventure Book Game is to choose a starting player. Each chapter has their own rules as to who should start. Everyone works together, so it really doesn’t matter.
10. GAMEPLAY | Player Turn
Each player will take a turn that consists of five steps and then the turn passes to the player to their left to repeat the same five step process. This continues until a chapter is completed or the players lose.
11. GAMEPLAY | Special Chapter Rules
Each chapter has its own special rules in addition to all the regular ones. These are on the left of the board, under the chapter, and make sense given what you are doing for each.
12. GAMEPLAY | Complete Challenges To Win
The way you complete a chapter is by finishing the challenges listed on the right side of the board. These vary in number and task from chapter to chapter but whenever you complete one, add one of the red “challenge complete” tokens on the challenge to show it is completed. When you finish a challenge, it usually triggers a reward. Follow what it says to do when completed.
13. GAMEPLAY | Phase 1 | Move
Here you can move any one character up to 2 spaces or any two characters up to 1 space. Spaces are the circular plots that are connected by paths. To move you can only go space to space if they are connected.
14. GAMEPLAY | Phase 2 | Storytelling (Action Phase)
Here you can do any of five actions as many times as you are able. (1) Discard any number of story cards from your hand and move any 1 character, 1 space for each card discarded this way. (2) Complete challenges. (3) Play special cards. (4) Trade a single card with any one player *only 1 of these per turn. (5) Use a “miracle” to draw 3 cards from the story deck or 1 card from the special deck.
15. GAMEPLAY | Using Story Cards To Complete Challenges
The base story cards are one of five different suits (Courage, Revenge, Adventure, Intrigue, Love). The special cards that you acquire more and more of as the game goes on are wild and can be used for any of these. Challenges (right side of board) will have a combination of these five symbols next to them. Once you have met the conditions of a challenge, you need to discard a card for each of those symbols to officially complete it.
16. GAMEPLAY | Phase 3 | Draw
Draw 2 cards from the story deck. If the story deck is ever out of cards when you need to draw, shuffle the story deck discard pile to form a new deck. This is important because it means all the special cards that you have used so far go back into the deck. This number grows as the game goes on and you complete tasks.
17. GAMEPLAY | Phase 4 | Plot Card
Flip over the top card of the plot deck. It will have a number on it and that will trigger something depending on which chapter you are in. Refer to the “Plot Table” on the middle left of the board to show what each does. It might place a token, move something, etc.
18. GAMEPLAY | “Interrupting” and Losing The Game
When you can no longer flip over another plot card, the game is “interrupted”. This means that Fred Savage is getting anxious and not liking how the story is being told. You flip his card over from “grandson” to “grandpa”. This is your one and only chance to do it again. From here, you start all over the chapter you are currently on but at least you continue to play. If you “interrupt” the game on the “grandpa” side, you lose and the whole thing is over. Other things, like chapter rules, can also “interrupt” the game. Note that you do keep the story deck in its current form, so that includes any special cards you picked up so far.
19. GAMEPLAY | Phase 5 | Discard
If you have more than six cards in your hand, discard down to six.
20. GAMEPLAY | Completing A Chapter
To complete a chapter, you must finish all the challenges listed on the right side of the board before the chapter gets “interrupted”. Once you do this, you will move on to the next chapter. You completely reset all the setup, based on the rules listed above with one exception, the story deck. The deck you draw from evolves over your play so keep those cards together (whatever has been drawn and/or used so far) and start with that as your story deck on the next chapter you take on.
21. WINNING | Make It Through All Six Chapters
To win the game you must complete all six chapters before the game is “interrupted” with the “grandpa” side of the card facing up. Everyone either wins or loses as a team. There are many steps and things are always changing in how to play The Princess Bride Adventure Book Game but you are very well guided by the board and instruction book.
HOW TO PLAY THE PRINCESS BRIDE ADVENTURE BOOK GAME – KEY INFORMATION
GAME CHAPTERS
Chapter 1 “As You Wish”
Buttercup enjoys nothing more than tormenting the farm boy, whose only reply is “as you wish”.
Chapter 2 “Escape By Sea”
Buttercup has been abducted by a trio of strange characters. As they make their escape by sea, a mysterious ship gives chase.
Chapter 3 “Cliffs Of Insanity”
Despite the efforts of Vizzini and his men, The Man in Black remains in hot pursuit. Prince Humperdinck has also given chase, hoping to further his plans to start a war with Guilder.
Chapter 4 “Fire Swamp”
Westley and Buttercup have made their escape into the Fire Swamp. Now they must survive its many perils and find their way through to Westley’s pirate ship. The Revenge.
Chapter 5 “It’ll Take A Miracle”
All seems lost. Westley is in the hands of the foul Count Rugen, trapped in the Pit of Despair; Buttercup is set to marry Prince Humperdinck; and Inigo has fled to the Thieves’ Forest. Fezzik sets off alone to find his friend.
Chapter 6 “Have Fun Storming The Castle”
Buttercup is to marry Humperdinck in little less than a half an hour. So all we have to do is get in, break up the wedding, steal the princess, make our escape… after I kill Count Rugen.
GAME CONTENTS
- 7x Character Miniatures
- 40x Story Cards
- 30x Special Cards
- 20x Plot Cards
- 4x Reference Cards
- 1x Rulebook
- 1x Game Book (Multi-surface player board)
- 29x Marker Tokes
- 5x Miracle Tokes
- 5x Challenge Complete Tokens
- 1x Replay Counter
HOW TO PLAY THE PRINCESS BRIDE ADVENTURE BOOK GAME – IN CLOSING
We hope you can now say you know how to play The Princess Bride Adventure Book Game. This is a wonderful cooperative adventure journey where you and your fellow players must traverse six story chapters right out of the classic 1987 film.
The game does a great job of blending the fun individual games with the overarching story that has a deck of cards filled with characters that meet you along your way helping you and making you stronger in anticipation of your final tasks. There may be a lot to do in order to take on this game, but everything is very clearly explained and all makes sense with the theme.
